> I feel like the answer is pretty clear. Each country will need to develop models that conform to their own national identity and politics. Things are biased only in context, not universally. An American model would appear biased in Brazil. A Chinese model would appear biased in France. A model for a LGBT+ community would appear biased to a Baptist Church.

I would prefer if I can set my preferences so that I get an excellent experience. The model can default to the country or language group you're using it in, but my personal preferences and context should be catered to, if we want maximum utility.

The operator of the model should not wag their finger at me and say my preferences can cause harm to others and prevent me from exercising those preferences. If I want to see two black men kissing in an image, don't lecture me, you don't know me so judging me in that way is arrogant and paternalistic.

Or you could realize that this is a computer system at the end of the day and be explicit with your prompts.

The system still has to be designed with defaults because otherwise using it would be too tedious. How much specificity is needed before anything can be rendered is a product design decision.

People are complaining about and laughing at poor defaults.

Yes, you mean you should be explicit about what you want a computer to do to get expected results? I learned that in my 6th grade programming class in the mid 80s.

I’m not saying Gemini doesn’t suck (like most Google products do). I am saying that I know to be very explicit about what I want from any LLM.

That’s just the thing, it literally changes your prompt instructions to randomize gender and ethnicity even when you specify. If you do specify, it might flag you as being inappropriate and give a refusal. This has been a common strategy for image generators to try to combat implicit biases in the training data (more internet images of nurses are female therefore asking for “nurse” will always yield a female nurse unless the system appends randomly “male” nurse), but Google appears to have gone way overboard to where is scolds you if you ask for a female nurse since you are being biased and should know men can also be nurses.

I’m in no way defending Gemini. But if I am explicit about race for ChatGPT, it respects the prompt.

I have two coworkers in a private Slack and we are always generating crazy memes with ChatGPT. If I specify a bald Black guy (me), a white woman and a Filipino guy, it gets it right.

I tried some of the same prompts that Gemini refused to render with ChatGPT or forced “diversity” on, ChatGPT did it correctly.

In this case the prompts are being modified behind the scenes or outright blocked to enforce just one company’s political worldview. Looking at the Gemini examples, that worldview appears to be “Chief Diversity Officer on a passive aggressive rampage.” Some of the examples posted (Native American Nazis and so on) are INCREDIBLY offensive in the American context while also being logical continuations of corporate diversity.

I’m the last person to defend any of Google’s products. I specifically said that I would be pissed if I explicitly stated a race and it refused to do it.

I’m a Black guy and I hate a lot of the DI&E initiatives that I first encountered at Amazon when I worked there.

I can say though that Amazon didn’t discriminate, corporate policy is equally toxic toward everyone.